Custom, Improvement and the Landscape in Early Modern Britain (Hardcover, New Ed)

A great deal has been written about the acceleration of English agriculture in the early modern period. In the late middle ages it was hard to see that English agriculture was so very different from that of the continent, but by 1750 levels of agricultural productivity in Britain were well ahead of those general in northern Europe. The country had become much more urban and the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture had fallen. Customary modes of behaviour, whilst often bitterly defended, had largely been swept away. Contemporaries were quite clear that a process of improvement had taken place which had seen agriculture reshaped and made much more productive. Exactly what that process was has remained surprisingly obscure. This volume addresses the fundamental notion of improvement in the development of the British landscape from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Contributors present a variety of cases of how improvement, custom and resistance impacted on the local landscape, which includes manorial estates, enclosures, fens, forests and urban commons. Disputes between tenants and landlords, and between neighbouring landlords, over improvement meant that new economic and social identities were forged in the battle between innovation and tradition. The volume also includes an analysis of the role of women as agricultural improvers and a case study of what can happen when radical improvement failed. The volume will be essential reading for scholars of landscape studies, rural and agrarian history, but will also provide a useful context for anybody studying the historical legacy of mankind's exploitation of the environment and its social, economic, legal and political consequences.

General

Imprint:	Ashgate Publishing Limited
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	October 2011
First published:	2011
Editors:	Richard W. Hoyle
Dimensions:	234 x 156 x 26mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	328
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-1-4094-0052-3
Categories:	Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Management of land & natural resources Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1500 to 1750 Books > Humanities > History > British & Irish history > General Books > History > British & Irish history > General Books > History > World history > 1500 to 1750
LSN:	1-4094-0052-2
Barcode:	9781409400523

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